Future of Christians in Pakistan

Author: Joshua Fazl-ud-Din

Publishing information: See the note at the end of this Book Review

Date: c. 1948/49

Pages: 140

“Future of Christians in Pakistan” is a great read for anyone who would like to understand the evolutionary cycle of the events that have led to the present dismal state of affairs in Pakistan particularly with regards to the minorities. Well said a poet, “there is a long time involved in the making of a tragedy, it doesn’t just happen accidently”. This is exactly how things have slowly but surefootedly cropped up the present circumstances for the minorities in Pakistan.

What has amazed me the most about the “Future of Christians in Pakistan” is the writer’s “almost” prophetic faculty to foresee the shape of things to come. Mr. Joshua Fazl-ud-Din displays a profound insight into the early events of the history of Pakistan that have now “blossomed” in full bloom to create the environment that the writer had feared as the “would be” plight of this country. What amazes me even more is that all the fears and apprehensions that the Mr. Joshua penned down in his book have not only materialized in their full manifestation but there are things that even he in his wildest imagination could not have pictured but they are now happening. Nevertheless, even if he did see them coming, he couldn’t have convinced himself that one day they could actually happen so he dissuaded himself from writing them down.

Mr. Joshua, for example, makes no mention of the possibility of the introduction of the blasphemy law which would clog any academic discussion of religion even on purely scholarly grounds. But we see that the blasphemy law is now here in all its “glare and glory” claiming scores of innocent lives mainly from the minority factions.

Throughout his book, Mr. Joshua reiterates the need of maintaining a strong Christian faith in the face of trials and troubles the Christian Minority was facing then, but he must be “rolling in his grave” to see what he was left shy of saying about the cold and cruel treatment being meted to the Christians in Pakistan now.

Mr. Joshua also mentions the sacrifices that were expected of the Christians to make and they indeed did make those sacrifices in order to make way for the Muslim migrants coming from Hindustan (India) The Christians were obliged to evacuate their houses and disclaim their lands with the standing crops to the immigrant Muslims.

The author does not fail to give the due credit to the Christian Missions and missionaries who left no stone unturned to help the displaced Christians in order to alleviate their woes and miseries. However, he laments the role of the British Imperialists who, despite sharing the same faith, deliberately remained biased towards Christianity and favored all the other religions and their followers. One cannot but fully agree with the writer that had the British taken a favorable approach towards Christianity or even had remained neutral, the social and religious landscape of the sub-continent would have been much different from what we see today.

I cannot admire enough the great insight and farsightedness that the author demonstrates in the 140 odd pages he has written on the Future of Christians in Pakistan, the future that we are living now. One cannot but speculate what more lies in the days, months and years to come that the author has only hinted at as a wave of severe and harsh persecution of the Christians has already been unleased in the pretext of establishing an ideal Islamic State founded on the Two Nation Theory and further groomed on the lines of the Objectives Resolution.

Lastly, as a keen reader of “Future of Christians in Pakistan” I strongly recommend the book to everyone who is bewildered at what is going on with the Christian minority in Pakistan as he/she will discover that all that we see now was not unexpected by the author who, over six decades before, as a keen observers of the events elaborately painted the picture of the Pakistan of today.

Book Review by Dr. Prudent Injeeli

Future of Christians in Pakistan by Joshua Fazal-ud-Din was first published in c.1948/1949. As far as our we could try, our team has not been able to locate a single printed copy of this precious little book. However, we were able to find a PDF of this work on the internet. Considering the number of typographical and grammatical mistakes the manuscript contained, it wass of a very poor quality, nevertheless, it did appear to be the complete text(140 pages). It is to Dr. Prudent Injeeli's credit that he not only discovered the PDF but has painstakingly revised it and updated it to a very high quality manuscript. In the process he has offered this Book Review to be published on CUWAP.ORG website.

If anybody has a copy of Future of Christians in Pakistan, please contact CUWAP.ORG to share the original publishing information. We would love to hear from you, and will be happy to acknowledge your help in appropriate place on this website.